1. Field of the Invention
The embodiments of the invention relate to recovery point identification in continuous data protection (CDP) environments.
2. Description of the Related Art
When identifying a data corruption problem, users find that a latest copy of data has been corrupted by some element, such as a virus attack, or a malfunctioning storage controller or disk. In cases of data corruption, a clean copy of the most current data must be retrieved. However, the recovery time is dependent on how quickly the most current clean copy of data can be identified and retrieved.
Data protection can be achieved by taking continuous or periodic snapshots of the data as it is being updated. Block level, file level, logical volume level, and database level data replication/recovery mechanisms are prominent data protection mechanisms.
Such data protection mechanisms vary with respect to their support for different data granularities, transactional support, replication site distance, backup latencies, recovery point, and recovery time objectives. Continuous data protection (CDP) is a form of continuous data protection that allows users to go back and recover earlier versions of a data object at the granularity of a single update.